


Spectrology

by Aierdome



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Creepy, Dream World, Dying person, Fic Exchange, Finnish magicks, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:03:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6578623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aierdome/pseuds/Aierdome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Far in the wildreness of northern Sweden, two men are walking through the storm, searching for something. Only one of them knows what they'll find, and he greatly underestimates the danger his academic research will put them in...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spectrology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Demon-Something](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Demon-Something).



> Prompt: Year Zero, explain exactly how ghosts came out. Perspective character doesn't need to become one, but seeing what caused it, and attempting to explain ghosts' full effects on people would be great to see. (I admit I disregarded the "Year 0" part)

_Observe: night time. Darkness is unbroken, thanks to the deep cover of clouds in the skies, like a heavy, dark-grey cot threatening to fall down and smother the living. Trees stand tall on the plains, their tips pointed towards the skies like an army of lances, ready to defend the night from being crushed. Neither sky nor trees move, locked in a Mexican standoff brought about by absence of wind. There is no sound, no life. If there was light, this single moment would be a set-up perfect for a painter; provided any painter would dare venture this far past the Cleansed lands._

_Watch closer: a cottage, standing at the edge of the forest. There is no light in it either, and the curtains pulled closed make it impossible to peek through the windows. The axes, visible through half-open door of a shed next to the house, suggest that the place belongs to a lumberjack, several perhaps. The tools are caked with dust and covered in earth; they weren’t used or cleaned in a while. There is no movement behind the curtain; no smoke rising from the chimney; no sound. It seems this is a house of dead men._

_This isn’t entirely correct._

_It is also, however, not entirely false._

_But no time to dwell on this. With a crack of lighting and roar of thunder, the clouds break the standoff. It starts to rain._

_Heavily._

***

The skies cracked and Erland Lindquist cursed heavily, pulling the hood of his coat over his head before checking once again if the rifle on his back was properly secured in its waterproof casing. It was, as it had been the last twenty times, but Erland went this way often enough to know it was better to check a hundred times than to have the rifle fail once.

“Rotten weather…”, he murmured under his breath.

“Oh? Did you say something?”

Erland cursed again, this time under his breath, glancing aside to regard his companion. Oskari Peura went without a hood, the rain pelting Finn’s greying hair and face with no discomfort to the man. He was looking at Erland now, his eyes questioning. They were glimmering with barely-hidden amusement. They always were.

“Nothing. Just cursing the weather.”

Peura shrugged, looking forward again with a soft smile.

“The gods bring rain whenever they choose to. Don’t let it tarry you; we’re almost there.”

Erland rolled his eyes, then sighed with incredulity as the tiny Finn started to walk faster, his boots splashing in the quickly-forming puddles of water. Lindquist considered him for a moment, considered his own aching feet, then glanced up into the skies and, gritting his teeth, jogged after the Finn, who was already disappearing behind the thick curtain of rain.

 

Erland was a soldier, a private in the Swedish army. Not a Cleanser, there was something deeply scary about flamethrowers; just a regular soldier, stuck in a non-com job of patrolling the outskirts of the living space the Swedes had burned out for themselves. Only usually, he was outside with his squad; this time, his only company was the weird Finn.

Peura arrived in Luleå a few days back, dressed in this poncho coat of his that Finns called a uniform, and headed straight for office of the Colonel, the commander of city’s defence forces. How did he know where it was? Nobody could tell. All people knew what that Peura had a letter from Finnish government – such as it was – and that the Colonel considered it to be credentials enough to agree to lend Peura a soldier half his age and send the two of them in search of…

A random lumberjack station, it would appear. Seriously, Erland had been given no information beyond the point on the map they were supposed to reach and an order to obey Peura’s orders as if they were Colonel’s. And the Finn was tight-lipped about it as well; for the entire day they’ve been marching, the only times the man had spoken had been when Erland said something, and the man’s entire demeanour didn’t exactly encourage conversation. At least Peura didn’t hide behind the language barrier; at contrary, his Swedish was nigh-flawless.

 

As they walked for the next five minutes with the accompaniment of splashes of mud and heavy rain tapping on their coats, intersected by an occasional lightning strike and a thunder way too close, Erland decided he had enough. He caught up with Peura and patted his arm.

“Hey, mister.”

The man glanced at him.

“Yes?”

“Can I get some answers at last? We’ve been going down this road for seven hours already, and I still don’t know what we’re after or what to expect.”

“Don’t worry, I do know.”

Erland snickered.

“Well, that’s excellent, but I’m the one supposed to be watching your back, right? Could be useful to know what I’m supposed to be watching it _against_.”

“Nothing you can kill with that fancy slugthrower of yours, private.”

Erland took a deep breath through his teeth. He walked around a large puddle quickly forming in the centre of the road and caught up with Peura again. The Finn nodded before Erland could speak.

“Hm, yes. I suppose telling you may be beneficial.” He paused for a moment as lightning struck, then added, “I am a scholar. I study magic.”

Erland’s jaw dropped from sheer incredulity. It took a thunder to close it.

“Excuse me? What, you’re a wizard?”

“The proper term would be _noita_. A dream has led me here in search of an event that would be quite beneficial to my studies if observed.”

Erland just stared.

“Aaand… the Colonel rolled with it?”

“Oh, yes. We know each other from the times your army was helping ours out in Kajaani. Me and Ingmar worked together back then. I even bought him a drink once.”

Erland snorted. _Yeah, sure_. Everyone knew the Colonel was the Colonel, not _Ingmar_. Sure, Finns would want his help – the Colonel could slay trolls faster than Norwegians – but the other parts didn’t fit at all. Colonel surely didn’t partake in drinking and he certainly didn’t have such a mortal thing as a _name_. 

“Whatever you say, mister Wizard. So, what mystic dream has led you to this forsaken place?”

“You shall see in about… now.”

 

Suddenly they were out of the forest, standing at the edge of a clearing. Behind the grey curtain of rain, there was a cottage on the far side of it and Erland found himself reaching for his gun.

“This is wrong.”, he murmured, eying dead chimney, open shed and closed, light-less windows. No sentry, either. There should be six men living there, and even in weather as wretched as this, there should be at least one watchman.

“How observant of you.”, Peura said, walking quickly across the wet grass. Erland followed, eying the walls of rain around him. There could be trolls hiding in there… He carefully started to unzip the gun’s bag.

“Wait with that until we enter.”, Peura called to him over the rain. 

“What makes you think we’ll enter at all? Your dreams?”

He heard dry laughter, an odd sound in the rain.

“I’m reminded of Ingmar when he first arrived, you know? You Swedes could try keeping your mind a bit more open.”

“So that all the crazy flows in? I think I’ll pass.”

Erland heard a chuckle and rolled his eyes.

They walked underneath a tiny roof before the entrance, finally out of the rain, and Erland’s mood grew darker. The dirt on the doormat was old, too old. No-one has entered this building in a while. Erland knocked on the door, waiting and straining his ears to hear over the loud hum. No answer.

“You didn’t expect anyone, did you?”, Peura asked. Erland shook his head, his growing dislike of the man vanishing as he slid the rifle out of the bag and into his hands, checking if the magazine was in place.

“I hoped. I suggest I enter first.” 

“You won’t find anything attacking you in there, private, but do go ahead.”

Erland sighed inwardly and, rising the rifle in one hand, put the other one on the handle.

The door opened without the handle needing to be turned, the wood creaking loudly despite the sounds of rain. Beyond hid darkness and musty smell of old dust. Erland swallowed involuntarily, then cursed himself and flicked on the flashlight on his rifle. It shone on a piece of cloth thrown haphazardly on the wooden floor.

“How inviting.”, he murmured and entered, step by step, Peura following on his feet as if he was strolling through a park in Mora. 

The light fell on a narrow corridor, the coat hangers empty, a hatchet lying on the floor, glistening from beneath a layer of dust and something black and thankfully un-bloodlike covering the blade. Erland walked over it, the only sounds the steady hum and rattle of rain behind the walls, and the floor creaking with his and Peura’s every step. The soldier gritted his teeth. If there was a troll hiding in there, it was surely aware of his presence now.

By the entrance to the main room there was a switch. Erland reached for it and pressed it. There was a moment of buzz and, after a second, weak yellow light flooded through the door. Erland carefully peeked inside, gun first.

 

There were six beds, a wardrobe and a table in there. The table was almost empty, but the floor around it was littered with trash, as if someone had swiped everything off. Erland spotted playing cards, an issue of a newspaper – a week old, going by a semi-familiar picture on the cover – cracked bottles and a few knocked-over chairs. Clothes were strewn out all over the floor, and the wardrobe was open wide, everything strewn out of it like animal’s guts. Oddly, five of the beds were perfectly made. The sixth one, under the window, directly in front of Erland…

There was a body lying there.

Erland instantly brought the rifle up, aiming at the body’s head. Human. No noticeable mutations. Grey beard, shortly cropped. Sunken eyes, staring into the ceiling. Skin heavily covered with red and black dots, and large dark wheals. First signs of the body turning into fleshmoss. 

It wasn’t moving, but Erland decided not to take any chances. He slowly walked into the room, the rifle still aimed at the head.

“Not immune.”, he murmured. “What was he doing out there?”

“Hoping to make some money, I’d wager.” Peura strolled into the room, seemingly uncaring for the dead man on the bed. He put his small bag on the table and pulled something out of it – from the corner of Erland’s eye, it looked like a journal and a set of pens. 

“What are you doing?”

“Taking notes.”

“On a dead body? I’m pretty sure you have plenty of those back in Finland.”

“Not a dead body. A dying one.”

_What?!_ Erland looked back to the corpse, staring at it. It failed to move, the empty eyes still staring into the ceiling.

“He’s _alive_?! He doesn’t even breathe.”

“He does, just barely.” Peura pulled himself a chair and sat, opening the journal. “You are seeing the final stage of the infection – the variation that doesn’t turn men into trolls, of course. The respiratory system is almost non-functional, the heart beats increasingly more rarely and the brain is, save for its most primitive functions, dead. The soul, however, is still lodged in – if my theory is correct, of course.”

Erland glanced at him incredulously.

“Are you _mental_? How can you take it so calmly?”

“Oh, don’t worry – his consciousness is long gone, he has no awareness of his current state. And frankly, this is what I came here for. It’s a good thing I didn’t let us set camp in the woods; we’d surely be late if we waited until morning.”

“Whaaa…” Erland took a deep breath. “Wait. Wait. Let me get this straight. We came to a cottage in bum-frak nowhere… to watch a dude die.”

“I am more interested in the process directly after death.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, why… the death itself is something I’ve had the dubious privilege of seeing quite a few times already.”

“Not what I was talking about.”

“I know.”

Erland gritted his teeth.

“ _So_?”

Peura made himself more comfortable, tapping the journal’s page with the tip of the pen. He looked up at Erland.

“As I said – I intend to observe him die and take notes of the process that happens immediately thereafter.”

Erland stared at him, wordless. The knife on his belt tempted. He could pull it out, slash and put the poor man on the bed out of his misery…

…and yet, Peura was here on Colonel’s orders, and the Colonel would have his skull as a new paperweight if Erland disobeyed him. He hesitated.

“You sure he doesn’t feel it?”

There was something like a shade of empathy in Finn’s eyes, quickly replaced with an amused glimmer. 

“Yes, trust me, it is a quite extensively documented process. Do you not read Rash literature? I’ve always been told it’s us Finns who are under-educated, not your kin.”

Erland sighed at the snicker and lowered the rifle, glancing once again at the grisly apparition and then grabbing a chair and pulling it up. He sat at the opposite side of the table from Peura, his eyes not leaving the almost-corpse. If they were going to wait, he could at least have a bloody sit.

 

A minute passed. Then two. Rain hummed and rattled on the window, waves of it coming and going in the dark, the ancient lightbulb barely illuminating the outside. Lighting struck three more times, outlining the trees Erland hoped were moving only in his imagination, and three more times thunder rolled over the house. It felt like there was nothing beyond the rain.

At last, the soldier sighed and glanced at the Finn in the corner of his eye.

“Alright, mister Wizard, tell me. Why are you staring at the dying guy?”

“Ah, well… tell me, private Lindquist, are you familiar with ghosts?”

“Yeah, sure. Totally. One’s living in my basement.”

Peura glared at him from under heavy eyelids.

“My question was quite serious. Ghosts are, like spirits, part of magic that has come into the world with the Rash, yet we know very little of them. I attempt to change that.”

Erland rolled his eyes. A lighting struck and he waited until the thunder rolled over before asking:

“Seriously?”

“Quite. You should ask colonel Bergman about magic sometime, I’m certain this would be an eye-opener for you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s say I believe you. Moving on?”

“Ah, yes. There is, let us put it… a question regarding where the ghosts come from. As I said, they are quite mysterious. We are certain they are human in origin; yet I’m sure even we two can both attest that not every human leaves one upon death.”

Erland nodded, staring at the dead body. Dust was collecting on the almost-corpse’s eyeballs. It looked painful and after a moment, Erland stood up and carefully closed the man’s eyes. Sitting down, he blinked and swallowed hard. He was talking cocky, but standing vigil over a dying man, alone in the middle of a storm, he couldn’t help but listen to Peura’s talking a bit more than he probably should. 

“So you think people who die of Rash, but don’t go troll, turn into ghosts.”

“The Illness corrupts the spirit as well as the body; it stands to reason, then, that even those who perished before they could be turned will not escape it unaffected.”

“Y-yeah…” Erland stared at the man. “And you think this is what will happen now?”

“I am quite certain.”

Erland glanced at the Finn sideways.

“So… if you claim your dream, or whatever, told you there’s this dude going to be attacked by a troll… Why didn’t you call the Colonel to warn him? We could’ve saved him.” _And probably his fellow workers, too_ , he added in his head, irrational anger rising with him. Peura shook his head.

“The dream only told me I should come here, and even that took me a while to puzzle out. I am no Icelander, kid. As far as my prophetic dreams go, they are maddeningly vague.”

“Yeah…” Erland sighed, then pressed his palm to his head. “Gah, what am I thinking…” _As if a bloody wizard’s dreams were reliable intel… Moron. What next, you’re-_

The body twitched. Erland jumped to his feet, raising the gun and aiming it at the head again. Another twitch. Then another. Dried-out fingers curled into claws.

“You bloody sure he’s not gonna turn troll?!”

“Quite certain, yes.” Peura didn’t even stand up, instead flicking his notebook open again. “What you see here is the last flash, the brain flaring up the nerves once again in a final attempt at life.” The body twitched again and Erland nearly jumped as lighting struck and light flickered above his head like this was some pre-Rash horror movie. The body twitched again, then again as the thunder rolled, and finally went still.

Erland stared at it suspiciously, but it wasn’t moving anymore. Everything returned to peace. The rain hummed. The light was steady. The body was dead.

Erland took a deeper breath and waited for a few moments before sitting back down and glancing at Peura. The Finn was noting something down, quickly, frantically, glancing from his notebook up and down again every few seconds. He wasn’t looking at the body, Erland realized, he was staring with amazement at something above it, murmuring to himself.

“ _Kiehtovaa! Tarkkaile, sotamies…_ I mean, observe! You can clearly see the wisps of smoke rising, and this doesn’t look like a regular soul at all! Not to mention the speed of it, it’s much slower than the usual soul leaving the body, and yet so fast! Amazing!”

Erland opened his mouth. He closed it. He glanced at the body. It failed to move, or emit any smoke, for that matter. Perhaps Peura was actually insane and just seeing things…

“Uhm, Wizard guy? It’s dead. There’s nothing there.”

This seemed to put Peura out of his trance, as he looked up at Erland sharply, annoyance in his eyes.

“Of course, I have forgotten. You are, unfortunately, quite blind.”

“Excu-“ He already glanced back to the corpse.

“Not now! I must study this… ohh, the apparition starts to take shape… yes, it looks like the ghosts we’re usually seeing! Fantastic, absolutely fantastic.”

“Wha-“

“I’ll have to send it away, of course, but watch, what a specimen! It’s already aware of its surroundings, examining them and… ah, look, it even noticed us! I wonder…” 

He suddenly fell silent.

“ _Oh_.”

Erland froze, his hand right above his rifle. 

“What was that… that ‘oh’ sound about?”

Peura stared into the air right in front of him.

“Oh. Uhm, I have just remembered something.”

Erland looked at the empty space. There was nothing there, not even traditional folk signs of ghostly presence. No cold, no weird shadows…

“What ‘something’?”

“The ghosts. They are usually… how should I put it… hostile.”

Erland let out his breath, the hand dropping down from the rifle. 

“Ah. Indeed. Fascinating, but probably not problematic, seeing how I still can’t see any ghosts.”

Peura didn’t share his relief. Quite the opposite, he seemed more and more riled up.

“It doesn’t mean it can’t see you. Grab your bag! I don’t like the way it’s staring at you.”

Peura quickly did what he’d ordered Erland to do, snapping his journal close, jumping to his feet and packing his bag. Erland stared at him and Peura looked up, his eyes flaring with hidden anger.

“Don’t tarry! We must get you out of here before it realizes it can hurt us!”

Erland shook his head, but put the rifle in the bag.

“What are you on, Wizard? This thing doesn’t have a body, how could it possibly hurt us?”

He threw the bag over his shoulder and moved towards the exit, when suddenly the floor jumped up to meet him. Erland only stared at it as it grew both closer and more distant, and somewhere, at the end of a really long tunnel, he could hear Peura’s annoying voice saying something…

_“Not good, not good… this is not good at all…”_

***

_Observe: an empty plain. It stretches into infinity under a perfect bowl of starry night sky, the horizon all but impossible to pinpoint, despite there being enough light to fool one into thinking it is daytime. It is not surprising; this is, after all, not the physical realm. It appears to human eyes as a plain of hardened stone, cracked and broken from lack of magic, a desert of dark, barren rock and no faith. It is silent; there is no wraithlike wind to carry the souls, and no souls to whimper and cry for the wind. Deep in the cracks, something black and wrong boils, yet makes no sound, for there is no wind to carry it and strike terror in the hearts of those who’d hear._

_Watch closer: there is a doe there, its glowing eyes watching from a distance a figure sprawled on the ground. Over the figure, another one leans closer. The former is definitely human; the latter is humanoid, yet shapeless, its fingers long and nimble, its eyes discs of light, its body shadow. It grabs the crumbled human by the neck and pulls up, holding the throat. A slit opens where its mouth should be. It coughs and gurgles, the sound ugly and quiet. The doe watches intently. Listens.  
_

_“R-kh-glrrrgh-L… Life…”, the ghost manages to say. “Life… Give… Must… Join… the Host…”  
_

_The slit opens into a maw. It is night deeper than that of its body, and something is wriggling inside.  
_

_The human’s eyes snap open.  
_

_He screams.  
_

_Something pulls him sharply and with a crack, he disappears._

***

Erland’s eyes snapped open and he screamed, the shriek completely drowning out all other sounds. A moment later he tried to take a breath, and then coughed, as something started to suffocate him. He started to dig his fingers into the earth, desperately craving for air. Something turned him around on his back. There were… _stars. Was he seeing stars? Eyes, thousands of eyes…_ No. Wet ground. Rain falling on him. Rainwater in his mouth, that’s why he was suffocating. Nothing weird. No stars. No eyes. Erland managed to take a few deep breaths and then coughed again, taking a lungful of air full of raindrops. 

A crack of thunder made him shudder and he closed his eyes for a moment. An afterimage flashed under his eyelids – _a gaping maw, and thousands of eyes waiting for him in the night_. His eyes snapped back open and the maw was gone.

_The hell just happened?_

“Private? Kid, are you quite alright?”

Was that… Peura? Wow, the man had a completely different voice when he was concerned. Erland turned on his back and managed to sit. The Finn was there, staring right at him, loose strands of hair clinging to his forehead and covering his eyes. Erland stared at him as concern in Finn’s eyes floated away, to be replaced by the usual almost-amused, inscrutable expression.

“What was that?”, Erland asked carefully, preparing himself for being mocked for fainting. Nothing of the kind, though – Peura actually considered the question before answering.

“Well, the ghost attacked you. I got you out of the cottage. It can’t stray too far from its original body, you see.”

“A… ha? Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Erland snickered, then a shade of laughter escaped his lips.

“Mock it all you want, but you can see you’ve lost your consciousness and only regained it here.”

“Sure, sure.” Erland slowly got up, pulling the hood over his head – a futile gesture, now that he was completely soaked – and waiting for Peura to join him on his feet. “It was probably just something in the air from this… deadness and Illness. Dust and Rash in the air. Made you see things, made me pass out. I mean, you can’t honestly believe you’ve seen a ghost and it attacked me?”

“I can and will.” Peura looked up at him. “And now, young man, do wait here while I send our ghost away. You can spend this time thinking of what you’ve seen while unconscious; it’ll sure be fascinating to hear.”

“Yep…” Peura was already on his way back towards the house. Erland considered joining him, then decided not to.

He blinked.

_The maw, and a thousand eyes…_

_NO._ He took a deep breath, reaching for the knife at his belt. The steel was warm… It shouldn’t be warm, it was raining… _Probably just your body heat. Stop fretting about ghosts…_ Still. Still. Perhaps he should speak with the Colonel about magic when they got back home… He’d laugh at him… No, he wouldn’t… of course he would, he was Swedish officer… But he was supposed to know Peura quite well… Dammit. What was he supposed to do?

 

A few hours later, after they had buried to body and got the cottage ready for sleeping in it, Erland finally decided that perhaps there was something more about the world than he had thought, and that the Colonel may know something. With that, he finally closed his eyes and fell to sleep.

He dreamt of a thousand eyes and a toothless maw.


End file.
